Second in a series of reading, writing, thinking strategies to include all learners in engaged, thoughtful, literacy sequences.

1. Whole Class Reading/Writing
Sequences, Grades 3-7
Cariboo-Chicotin
November 20, 2023
Faye Brownlie

2. Learning Intentions/Key Questions:
How have my learners
grown since September?
How do I plan with
connecting, processing,
personalizing and
transforming?
How do I include ALL
learners in meaningful,
whole class literacy
lessons?
What will my instruction
look like?

3. Who: The child and the class of children
Word Recognition/
Word Production
Creating Meaning/
Communication
How: Teachers’ response to the child’s strengths
and stretches
What:
The
Frame-
work

4. Planning in a Competency Based Curriculum
-based on students’ strengths and stretches
• Choose your Big Idea(s)
• Stories and other texts help us learn about ourselves, our families, and our communities (2-3) and make connections (4-5)
• Curiosity ad wonder lead us to new discoveries about ourselves and the world around us, (K-3) contributing to our ability to be informed and engaged citizens.(4-5)
• Choose your key curricular competency(ies)
• Access information and ideas for diverse purposes and from a variety of sources and evaluate their relevance, accuracy, and reliability. (6-9)
• Exchange ideas and viewpoints to build shared understanding and extend thinking. (6-9)
• Synthesize ideas from a variety of sources to build understanding. (5-9)
• Use writing and design processes to plan, develop, and create engaging and meaningful literacy and informational texts for a variety of purposes and audiences. (6-9)
• Choose your shared content (your provocation/text to develop the curricular competencies)
• Ancient Civilization/Early Man/hunters and gatherers – some practices still common today
• Choose your strategy sequence to teach
• Connecting: group cluster – what do you know?; rearrange cluster with new connections; timed write
• Processing: read, summarize, and share information tidbits
• Transforming and personalizing: in several days, create a time travel brochure: return to Neolithic period with increased survival skills
• Plan your teaching with gradual release “Do students OWN content information which they will need to transform into their brochure?”
• Building background information through slides, pictures, note-taking sheets, some text reading (read 3 times with different purposes).
• What do they know independently and collectively ? cluster
• Build specific vocabulary as students share.
• Quick write: begin with 2 words from the cluster, highlight a gem – specific information, share
• Add on information – highlight and share, write again – 2 minutes
• Consider if new information should be presented to the class or if students can research in pairs and independently, on questions they now have.
• Feedback
• For teacher: cluster, what do they know? What is their working knowledge?
• Notice and question as students are sharing to extend the thinking.
• Give feedback to students as they are writing and/or sharing their summaries.
• Begin to develop criteria for the brochure: content and style

5. Early Man – gr 6/7, Fraser Lake, Miranda Federici,
clustering, re-clustering, key words, response
• Clustering – what do you know about early man
• Re-clustering – mess it up, make new connections
• Timed write – choose two words/phrases and begin. What do you
know?
• Word count and underline significant/important phrase/sentence
• Share
• New information: read and summarize orally
• Add on: something significant you learned

6. • Strengths
• Think/pair/share
• Capable readers
• Strong at fill-in-the-blanks – and love it
• Stretches
• Shy in larger group
• Generally quiet
• Wide range of social-emotional response
• Preferred Greek myths to Early Man

18. 4 picture write – Donri Helmer, 100 Mile House, and Duke of
Marlborough School, Churchill: Wendy Gauthier, Edina Preteau, George Power
• Divide a paper in 4 boxes. 4 words will be given, one at a time.
• Sketch all that you can think about
• the word – 1 minute. No talking. Share with a partner after some of the words.
• Be thinking of a story you can create, using all these words.
• Teacher modeling on the board, as students work.
• Before writing, brainstorm for different ways to begin a story. Explicit teaching
point!
• Timed write – 4 minutes, then added on 2, then 2-3 more.
• Underline your most powerful sentence.
• Writers’ mumble – sentences or spelling or transitions….
• Share.

23. • Day 2
• Review the criteria.
• Repeat the process with new words and sketches.
• Continue to write and conference.
• Practice 3-4 times with different words, then invite students to choose the piece
they are most invested in, review the criteria, edit and revise.
• Collect evidence of growth in students’ writing fluency, more sophisticated use of
the specific skill you taught, their attention to criteria to guide their writing, their
ability to take risks with their thinking, their perspective, and their language.
• Code using a single rubric from the BC Performance Srandards.
• Watch for evidence of the targeted competencies in their daily writing –
ownership and independence.

24. Building Criteria
• Read to see ’what works’. What strengths do you see in the writing?
• Collect
• Meaning
• Style
• Form
• Conventions
• Use as a guide when students are writing
• Have students ‘mark up’ their writing, identifying which criteria they have
met
• Use the criteria to help organize your conference
• What’s working?
• What’s not yet? With advice/hints to move on

25. Building BK on Residential Schools before reading My
Name is Seepeetza, Lisa Pugh, Horse Lake, Gr 6/7
• Cluster of what you know
• Quick write
• Wonder at vertical spaces, teams of 3
• Share top 2
• Quick write
• 2 U tube videos
• Quick write
• Underline and share powerful line – found poem
• Exit slip: what can you do to move forward?

35. • Why did the government and churches feel everybody had to be the same?
• Were the teachers and nuns forced to abuse the kids?
• What happens if siblings are put together and the nuns didn’t know?
• How was this legal?
• I think they are brave.
• Some people survived residential schools.
• The kids were scared.
• Why would the church run the schools?
• This should never happen again with anything.
• What they suffered
• Similar to concentration camps
• The survivors had nothing good to take away from the schools.
• I think the survivors of the school are extremely brave.
• Why would they take the kids/entire families for so long just because they were different or weird?
• Just seeing how sad they were really makes we wonder what were some of the hardest things they experienced.
• I also noticed in some of the videos that all the kids looked sad, but all the adults looked happy or were smiling.
• Did he die because he ate poisoned food?
• Why do people expect us to deal with it when they didn’t deal with it?

36. Next:
• New vocabulary
• Introduce 2 information texts
• Read to find answers to several of your questions
• Record what you are learning
• Share significant findings
• Add on to your recording/writing
• Setting the stage for My Name Is Seepeetza

37. Desert Girl, Monsoon Boy
-Tara Dairman, Archana Screenivasan
A sequence with PattiAnn Plowman and her gr. 5/6
Learning Intentions:
1) I can determine what is important and give evidence to support my ideas.
2) I can communicate my thinking orally and in writing.

38. Goats
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7Q_NEjwd6c

39. • https://www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/camels/san-diego-zoo-
kids/

40. • Connecting
• Build interest and background knowledge
• After each video and each set of images, discuss ‘What do you know?’
• Quick write
• What’s important about goats and camels? Star your best idea. Whip around and share
the best ideas.
• With 2 teachers, one teacher writes in front of the students, with the students.
• This is a model, can be a teaching point, can provide inspiration and ideas for those who need
more support.

43. • The most important thing about camels is their ability to survive in
incredibly harsh and dry desert conditions. They are adapted to this
environment in many ways and don’t need humans to intervene for
them. Their best protection is drinking water – more than 300
bottles at a time – and then not needing another drink for weeks!
Also, they only need to eat every few months which is incredible.
They walk easily on the sand because of their flat, split hooves.

44. • Connecting
• Show the picture.
• Create a notice/think/wonder chart, with contributions from all students.
• Quick write
• What do you think is happening? How do you know? Star your best idea. Whip around
and share.
• Again, one teacher writes with the students.

45. Notice/Think/Wonder

46. • This image is about moving, about people and their animals
changing places. In the top picture, the people and their animals are
walking in a line, moving to another location, as shown by all the
material that the camels are carrying. It seems as if they have done
this before because the camels and the goats are not tethered, but
walk between the people. Everyone must be used to this form of
travel. It looks hot and dry, even with the hills in the background. In
the bottom, the colours are so different – deep green, but with hills in
the background too. Maye these are the same hills. There are fewer
people in the boat in the bottom… Are there

47. • Processing
• Introduce 2 maps to situate the story in the world.
• Read the inside cover/background information and introduce some of the specific
language/concepts that prompted the author to write.
• Rebari people
• Gujarat and Rajasthan
• nomadic
• pastoralists
• herding camels
• permanent homes
• Aravelli Hills
• sustainability
• climate change

48. • Processing
• Read the story (or listen to it) and notice the pictures.
• Reread the story, focusing on the camels and goats.
• How does what you know/learned about camels and goats connect to this story?
• Why does it matter? What’s important?
• Reread the story, from the perspective of either the desert girl or the
monsoon boy.
• What is important or challenging from the perspective of your character?
• Transforming/Personalizing
• Ticket out the door: How does this connect to me?

50. 4 minutes with add ons
• We thought when we abandoned our camel herds and settled outside
the city that our life would improve. We had our goats, their milk,
their meat. They eat anything so they were easy to move. I finally had
a chance to go to school. I missed being nomadic and moving all the
time, but I liked that we didn’t need to pack up and the sand didn’t
blow in our faces all the time. But when the rains came, they never
stopped. Our homes were flooded with our belongings floating away.
We only had one boat to load my family, our goats and all our
belongings. Where can we move next? What will be a safe place to
live? When the rains stop, can we return to the farm? It is not safe
and very scary living like this.

51. • Follow-up mini lessons
1. Review learning intentions
• Share several samples of student writing and look for examples of important
and evidence.
• Co-create criteria.
• Revise – not rewrite – to better reach the LI: choose what is important and
provide evidence.
2. Review learning intentions
• Reread Margaret Wise Brown’s The Important Book.
• Share several student samples: What is important? What is the evidence?
• Choose 1 of their 3 pieces of writing (from the picture, perspective,
connection) to revise.

52. GOATS:
• More people drink goats milk than cows milk because they produce more milk. (SM gr. 5 girl – strong)
• Goats east almost anything and live almost anywhere. (CM gr. 6 boy – struggles with decoding and
spelling/writing)
CAMELS:
• The most important thing is that camels can survive in harsh weather. Camels have very long eyelashes and
a third eyelid to protect themselves form sand being blown around. (MB – gr. 6 girl – strong)
• Camels are important because they do not need food or water. They carry stuff on their backs through the
desert. Camels can go for weeks and months… (AR – gr. 6 girl – struggles with decoding, comprehension,
and spelling)

53. PICTURE:
• I think that the town is flooding and they’re trying to escape and top is them looking for a new home
in the desert. And I they they’re saving the animals too. (RC – gr. 5 boy – struggles with written
output and comprehensions)
• I think that it is showing two different places and showing what the difference is between a hotter
environment and a colder one. I think this because it looks like on the pictures there are different
things and different animals and that reminds me of different environments. (AR – gr. 5 girl – strong)
PERSPECTIVE:
• It would be very difficult to not have much water and to get very hot and be sandy all the time like a
dry beach because sand is itchy but it would be nice to have lots of camels and goats (GH – gr. 6 girl –
strong oral language and lots of knowledge, struggles with written output – Brit 😉)
• I would want to be the monsoon boy because I would want to have water and the desert girl is in the
desert and it is hot. The monsoon boy has lots of water and lots of wind but its better than having not
a lot of water and having to be in a really hot place all day. (OW – gr. 6 girl – average, some challenges
with reading and writing)

54. CONNECTS TO ME:
• They are kids like us. (AA – gr. 6 girl – struggles with reading and writing - my gal who doesn’t
always stay in the classroom)
• Here the summers are hot and there are strong winds in the fall. (AM – gr. 6 girl – average – slow
processing and doesn’t always get a lot written and wrote a lot!)
• It connects to me because I have to move as well as she does. (ST – gr. 6 girl – average – different
perspective)
• It shows us how bad conditions some people have to live in and how we have lots of water and
food. (MH – gr. 6 boy – very quiet, doesn’t always share, thoughtful guy)
• The world is changing and its our world that’s changing not just India (GH – gr. 6 girl – Brit 😊)

55. Connections
• Climate change – how this affects people around the world
• Process –big ideas and details/evidence to support grew with practice
• Getting ideas from others in the class
• Surprises in others’ thinking
• Surprised about how much background knowledge YOU had about camels

56. Implementing
What did you try since our last
session?
What would you like to change
or add to the literacy work you
are doing with your learners?
What is ideas are you taking
away from today?
What will you try?